image via Véhicules électriques Simon André on YouTube
Tesla’s electric vehicles aren’t always friendly to customization. The company has a reputation of making intricate vehicles from a team full of engineers with specific knowledge. Nevertheless, drivers, gear heads, and hackers continue to attempt their own custom modifications to Tesla vehicles. In a new project, a team of hackers successfully added a horsepower boost to the Tesla Model 3 Dual Motor.
A repair shop located in Quebec that focuses on electric vehicles, Véhicules électriques Simon André, performed the upgrade in detail on their YouTube channel as seen above. Perhaps the most significant challenge of the upgrade came in hacking the vehicle’s software. There’s a drive inverter that’s programmed to operate a single motor.
Tesla sells a version of this upgrade with an Acceleration Boost package that costs drivers an additional $2,000 USD, but the Quebec team Ingenext is offering it for $1,100, an unofficial upgrade for a 50 hp boost.
You can see below in the video from Rich Rebuilds below showing off a hacked Model 3 Dual Motor using the same modifications as well but in the United States, available from installers Electrified Garage in Seabrook, New Hampshire.
There’s also a second upgrade available called “The Ghost”, which costs $2,250 and will add 150 HP to your Model 3 Dual Motor, allowing for 0-60 MPH times of 3.2 seconds. This upgrade will not let you get over-the-air software updates from Tesla, as you’ll need to go back to Electrified Garage to upgrade your car, which comes with an extra fee.
Now, it may be a risk to your warranty to install a third-party mod such as this into your Tesla. While Ingenext says you can still install software updates with the module installed, Tesla could easily shut this down through software at some point, rendering your modification useless.
